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An UrbanDaddy Publication

08/01/2012

A Kempt Farewell to Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal published 25 novels, two memoirs and reams upon reams of historical and opinionated essays, plays, television dramas and screenplays. “Style,” he once wrote, “is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.” By that definition, one of the most stylish gentlemen we have ever known passed away last night at the age of 86.

We’re not ones to flippantly eulogize. (That’s what Facebook is for.) But every so often, the passing of a great man consequently marks the passing of something greater than just one man, or in the case of Mr. Vidal, a Man of Letters—erudite, wittily cynical, well-informed, prolific, compassionate and fearless.

A title may never again befit a gentleman so justly.

Love is not my bag. —G.V.

“Write what you know” will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect! —G.V.

Eugene Vidal Sr. founded three airlines, including one that became TWA. He had so much faith in his Hammond Flivver Plane that he sent 10-year-old Gore aloft to fly it.

By the time he was 25, he had already had more than 1,000 sexual encounters with both men and women, he boasted in his memoir Palimpsest. Mr. Vidal tended toward what he called “same-sex sex,” but frequently declared that human beings were inherently bisexual, and that labels like gay (a term he particularly disliked) or straight were arbitrary and unhelpful. For 53 years, he had a live-in companion, Howard Austen, a former advertising executive, but the secret of their relationship, he often said, was that they had never slept together. —NY Times Obituary

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. —G.V.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. —G.V.

There is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise. —G.V.

Moments before appearing on The Dick Cavett Show, Norman Mailer head-butted Vidal in the green room. The fight continued (verbally) on air, stopping only when Cavett instructed Mailer to “take this piece of paper, fold it five ways and put it where the moon don’t shine.”